In 1978, America's national debt totaled less than one trillion dollars. Today,
just 35 years later, the debt has ballooned to 16.5 trillion. What's the problem, and what do we do about it? The solution I propose is a government-wide management-restructuring effort that starts with the elimination of all revolving-door corporate (RDC) political-appointee managers who shuttle between corporate and government management
positions.

Recall that, in the late 1970s, politicians of both parties launched a diatribe against government inefficiency and emphasized the need to cut costs and operate
the government more like a private-sector business. While the charges about government waste were accurate, both the Democratic
and Republican politicians who pointed it out failed to identify the managers
responsible for it. Were the culprits the non-partisan government-service
(GS-level) career bureaucrats who were required to meet the minimal Office of
Personnel Management (OPM) requirements of a four-year technical-college degree for
each of the government's professional positions? Or, did the problem go beyond individuals to a failed
employment practice? Was it in fact the result of changing every four to eight years each administration's top department, bureau, and agency RDC/Executive
Schedule (EX-level) political-appointee managers with a
new set of partisan RDC/EX corporate political-appointee managers? To me, it is clear that the rotating political appointees either use, or undermine, the respective bureaucracies, or the bureaucracies use, or deceive them. Either way, the bureaucracies ultimately control
each incoming administration by the misinformation they convey.

The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) was supposed to cut
the government's exorbitant waste by adding yet another level of partisan RDC/Senior
Executive Service (SES) corporate political-appointee managers to both the
executive and judicial branches to "manage" all GS-level government professionals. According to the 1978 CSRA, these partisan RDC/SES-level corporate political-appointee
managers would comprise "highly respected men and women from outside the
government..." whose mission would be "to build a new federal system of excellence and accountability."

As things turned out, however, corrupt politicians used these partisan RDC/SES-level corporate political-appointee managers to undermine the American people's best interests in two
ways:

First, the executive and judicial
branches were no longer independent, in violation of the Constitution and our
forefathers' checks and balances. Instead, the partisan RDC/SES-level corporate political-appointee managers operated both branches as one, simply by placing their
partisan corporate managers in both branches. Second, in violation of another one of our forefathers' checks and balances, GS-level government professionals were no longer independent and free
of outside political pressure(s) to ensure the American people's best
interests.

With the added management tier, GS-level government
professionals now found themselves accountable to two levels of partisan RDC political-appointee managers: each incoming administration's partisan RDC/EX-level corporate political
appointees, and the partisan RDC/SES- level corporate political-appointee managers. This development gave the GS-level government workers two options. They could advance their career by saying
and doing whatever the partisan RDC/EX/SES-level corporate political appointees told them
to do; or they could imperil their career (and job) by questioning the corporate
political appointees' blatant conflicts of interest, their levels of wrongdoing,
and their gross waste, fraud, and abuse of the taxpayers' money.

The ultimate
question is this. Why has no one
questioned the legality of the 1978 CSRA, when this legislation introduced another
level of partisan RDC/SES corporate political-appointee managers to undermine every
facet of the government's technical operations (and the GS-level government
professionals), along with the Constitution's most basic precepts?

Reagan's Influence

- Advertisement -

In 1981, by coincidence, or not, President Ronald Reagan announced his corporate-driven "government
that governs least, governs best" Republican ideology--in effect placing the welfare
of the American people in the hands of corporations, again. Reagan's premise was
that corporations would function for the good of both the private and public
sectors; there was no need for government's burdensome corporate rules and
regulations.

Over the following 32 years to the present, concurrent with the elimination of government rules and regulations, the Republican ideology that the best government governs least (for corporations) was selectively modified to include the notion that the best government also governs most (over all GS-level government professionals). Now, partisan RDC/EX/SES-level corporate political appointees have assumed dictatorial powers and carte
blanche authority over both security (FBI, CIA, and NSA) and non-security GS-level government professionals; they have also systematically eliminated anyone who
has questioned their corporate-driven deregulation, outsourcing, and war-related
agendas.

With these developments, two covert political strategies have virtually ensured a corporate
stranglehold on the federal bureaucracy--then, now, and forever. The first strategy covertlyeliminated the minimal OPM college-degree
requirement from at least three of OPM's GS-level professional position
standards (explained later); in so doing, it undermined
another of our forefathers' checks and balances, this one mandating a professional
GS-level government workforce.

The
second covert strategy includedthe
Republicans' (and now Obama's) abuse of
the government's secrecy policies, in order to hide all levels of wrongdoing. This is, of course, theantithesis of any democratic form of government.

The Need for Reform

- Advertisement -

The following examples will illustrate the necessity to restructure every facet of
the government's operations, in order to eliminate the pilfering of trillions of
dollars of the American people's money and the bureaucracy's monumental waste in subsidizing that undemocratic activity.

In October, 1987, the Central Agencies' partisan RDC/EX/SES-level
corporate political appointees knowingly outsourced deficient financial-management contractor (FMC) software to all Department of Defense (DOD) and non-DOD department, bureau, and agency accounting offices. Those Central Agencies
include the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB), and the Treasury Department. The FMCs include the American
Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), financial software
companies, and management-consulting firms.

Having received the deficient FMC software, the DOD and non-DOD department,
bureau, and agency partisan RDC/EX/SES-level corporate political appointees then forced it on the accounting offices, despite ongoing
resistance from the government's non-partisan GS-level professional accountants and
auditors.

I graduated from Michigan Technological University (MTU) in June 1968 with a BSBA in accounting and have been a federal accountant for over 40 years, 25 as a whistleblower in the government, and 2 years retired.
In the early 1980's, I became (more...)